"Margaret Thatcher was a pioneer, willingly or unwillingly, for the role of women in politics," the actress told The Wrap.

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"To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was ground-breaking and admirable." She added: "To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, levelled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas - wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now - without corruption - I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle."

However, Streep did criticise Thatcher's "hard-nosed fiscal measures", which she feels "took a toll on the poor" while enriching the more privileged.